July 2010

July 31, 2010

This Sunday a couple of snapshots from last night and this morning from my varied encounters in connection with the biography of Ahmadabad that I am in the midst of researching.

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Snoop Dogg was born almost exactly a year after Jimi Hendrix died. Also, Snoop Dogg is not Jimi Hendrix. They are actually two different men.

But why would such facts matter to a teenage boy wearing a T-shirt with Hendrix’s face printed in the front and his name inscribed name at the back? Out of curiosity I asked the teenage boy if he knew who it was on his T-shirt. He said with certitude that is peculiar to that age, “It is Snoop Dogg.”

Who told you that, I asked encouraged by his response. The boy unconsciously touched the diamond stud on his left ear and said, “My mom told me that.” For the sake of accuracy I must mention that our conversation happened in Gujarati at a multiplex in Gandhinagar, the staid capital of Gujarat, last night.

A Jimi Hendrix T-shirt worn by a Gujarati teenage boy who thinks the man is Snoop Dogg because his mother said so. If there is anything wrong with this picture I am not getting it.

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This morning I went to the Gujri Bazaar on the banks of the Sabarmati river.It is the local version of the flea market. I was bludgeoned by a debilitating stench of cow dung mixed with human excrement, deep fried by the overnight rain and simmering in early morning humidity. I could tell strong traces of methane but I am sure there were other gases as well. The sellers at the Gujri Bazaar should have no problem surviving on the Mars, considering the amount of their daily methane intake.

Once past the odors I chanced upon a rare four-volume collection of Govardhanram Tripathi’s Gujarati classic “Saraswatichandra.” A couple of onlookers who were eying the same set told me with great pride, “Saheb, tame favi gaya. (Sir, you hit a jackpot). There is always a volume missing from such sets. You got all four,” said one of them. I paid Rs 150 for the set originally priced Rs 8 in 1958.

In the pantheon of Gujarati literary giants Tripathi is right there at the top, although I am not too sure if his barely hidden orthodoxy will have many takers now. I was taught Saraswatichandra in school. My essay on it was adjudged to be the best in the class. I have just begun reading the novel after 35 years. Occasionally I will keep you posted.

July 30, 2010

Money may not to buy love but it does achieve a fairly effective approximation. Trust, however, is another matter altogether as the US is discovering with Pakistan.

All the billions that Washington has poured into since 9/11 and pronouncements of friendship notwithstanding, the country’s favorable rating in Pakistan remains a pathetic 17 percent, according to the Pew 2010 Global Attitudes survey. Some 59 percent of the Pakistanis surveyed describe the US as an enemy and only 11 percent a partner. I suspect all the 11 percent is constituted by pliable politicians and generals through whom billions are routed.

On India, the findings are in line with the historic love-hate relations. “While Pakistanis express serious concerns about the U.S., they also have deep worries about their neighbor and longtime rival India. Indeed, they are more worried about the external threat from India than extremist groups within Pakistan. When asked which is the greatest threat to their country -- India, the Taliban or al Qaeda -- slightly more than half of Pakistanis (53%) choose India, compared with 23% for the Taliban and just 3% for al Qaeda,” the survey found.

Before you rush to ridicule the fact that Pakistanis find the Taliban and al Qaeda much less of a threat than India, do reflect. It is not as absurd as it sounds. The Taliban was midwifed by Pakistan and as WikiLeaks leaks show they can still be reined at will by the country’s military-intelligence complex with some effort. As for al Qaeda, I think once they have cornered the Taliban, it may not be all that difficult to very significantly cut down al Qaeda.

What illustrates the love side of the love-hate relations with India is this finding: “However, despite the deep-seated tensions between these two countries, most Pakistanis want better relations with India. Roughly seven-in-ten (72%) say it is important for relations with India to improve and about three-quarters support increased trade with India and further talks between the two rivals.”

July 29, 2010

It is strange that the US is more upset that WikiLeaks leaked thousands of pages of fairly damaging documents about the wrongs going on in the Afghan war than the fact that such wrongs are going on. The anger seems more at being found out rather than doing/acquiescing to/conniving at something which is wrong in the first place.

That the Afghan war is not going well should surprise no one with elementary knowledge of the region’s history over the last 2000 years or so. That the war has not achieved any of its two main objectives—namely destroying Al Qaeda/capturing Osama bin Laden and dismantling the Taliban—should also not surprise anyone familiar with how seamlessly such misanthropic forces merge or metamorphose into one another there.

In the immediate aftermath of 9/11 not a lot of people around the world disagreed that the US had no choice but to cut down those who wounded it so grievously. As it turned out that was just a trigger for a military engagement which is now in its tenth year and showing no signs of ending anytime soon. I can tell you with almost complete certainty that no one in Washington can tell you with any certainty under what “victorious” circumstances would the US withdraw all its forces from Afghanistan and when. That’s because they have no clue.

The 75,000 or so documents leaked by WikiLeaks reveal nothing that those who run wars do not already know. However, in this particular case Pakistan’s double-dealing in allegedly both supping with and socking the Taliban as convenient makes things way more complicated. General Ashfaq Kayani, who has joined the long list of America’s preferred global generals, was in charge of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) during the period 2004-2007 which also happens to be the period through which WikiLeaks has exposed the ISI’s alleged dealings with the Taliban.

All this while the US is bankrolling Pakistan with billions of dollars in military and civilian aid. What is funny is that the Obama administration insists that it will not give Pakistan a “blank check”. If $ 7.5 billion for five years in civilian aid and $2 billion a year in military aid are not blank checks, then one wonders what blank checks look like.

July 28, 2010

Sometime in the next few days I plan to visit Anand, the epicenter of India’s ‘White Revolution’ in the 1970s,80s and beyond. The town, which is less than an hour’s drive from Ahmedabad at twice the prescribed speed limits on the expressway, pioneered milk cooperatives and played a leading role in turning India into a top milk producing nation.

However, my visit has nothing to do with milk.In recent years, Anand has become the world capital of surrogate mothers. Young women in Anand and surrounding areas rent out their wombs to infertile couples from around the world for a fee. Think of their wombs as high-end boutique hotels where life-building materials from the infertile couples lodge in great comfort to eventually produce babies. Babies are checked out after a nine-month paid incubation. Infertile couples get their babies and womb boutique hotel operators their money.

I make surrogacy sound like a matter of guilt-free business transaction which is also totally devoid of any moral complexities. Not having visited the town and not having spoken to those involved in surrogacy, it is probably premature to make a final pronouncement. However, I am not getting the moral complexity part of the rising debate over surrogacy. Why is there no moral debate over a techie renting out his or her coding skills? Or for that matter any professionals leveraging whatever skills, natural or acquired, they possess. If a woman wants to make her uterus work for her financially, what is so morally complex about it?

I shall dwell on a range of issues once I have visited Anand and spoken to all the stakeholders. On the face of it though I see now downside to this, certainly no moral downside to it. Surrogacy is not a moral question as long as it is done out of personal choice.

July 27, 2010

It was only a matter of time before Mani Shankar Aiyar was called “anti-national.” As it turned out it was not a matter of long time. He was called that almost instantly by Suresh Kalmadi.

For those who do not know such things and care even less to find out, Aiyar is one of India’s most engaging politicians gifted with great wit and erudition. And Kalmadi is the chairman of the Commonwealth Games organizing committee. The games are being hosted by New Delhi in about two months at the cost of Rs. 300 billion (about $6 billion).

Aiyar has ferociously opposed the games on many different grounds from the time they were announced and Kalmadi has championed them with equal force. Of course, in front of Aiyar’s natural gift of the gab Kalmadi sounds nearly semi-literate. But that is not germane to the debate.

The latest jousting between the two has to do with Aiyar saying this yesterday: "Personally, I will be unhappy if the Commonwealth Games are successful…I am very happy with the rains, firstly because it will ensure a good agriculture for the country and secondly because it will ensure that the Commonwealth Games are spoilt. If the Games are successful, they will further organize Asian Games and other events... I will be happy if the Games are spoilt.”

Kalmadi, stung by Aiyar’s latest criticism, called him “anti-national”, saying had Aiyar remained the country’s sports minister no new stadium would have been built.

Mani Shankar Aiyar is precisely the kind of contrarian India needs. Personally, I agree with almost everything that Mani stands for and where I don’t, I always find him captivating. It is hard to fault his contention that Rs. 300 billion would have been better spent on creating nationwide sports infrastructure and turning India into a great sporting nation in the next five years. Hosting the Commonwealth Games is at best profligacy born of misplaced hubris in a country which is not by instinct a sporting nation.

I can see why many would be offended by Mani’s comments. It is easy to read him selectively and dismiss him as anti-India. Not that he needs me to interpret his comments but anyone born with a reasonably functioning brain would know better than calling him “anti-national.” There is nothing inherently wrong or treasonous about the logic that if the games succeed, it would only fuel the unfounded hubris of those who organized them and reinforce their resolve to spend even more on such future spectacles without really addressing the more fundamental problems.

Even if one factors in the galvanizing effects of a successful sporting spectacle on any country, I am not sure if those are worth Rs. 300 billion. That kind of money could have been spent on addressing some of the root causes of the rebellion of the disenfranchised that the Maoists are so egregiously exploiting. Even the most optimistic Indian would find it hard to believe that not a penny was consumed by corruption which is so intrinsic to enterprises of such scale in India.

Now that India has spent that kind of treasure on an event in which it is almost destined to be a mediocre performer, we have no choice but to hope for the best. But hoping that the games fail still does not make Mani Shankar Aiyar anti-national. It makes him clinically rational.

July 26, 2010

For the past few weeks I have been on a quest to find the single most defining feature of Ahmedabad. I have narrowed my search down to two or three attributes that I believe define the city.

I am not going to write about any here because that is going to be a key part of the biography of Ahmedabad that I am currently working on. And why would I want to ruin the slimmest of chances that some of you may actually buy and read the book?

However, (I must profusely thank the inventor of however for it always offers a great segue to anything), there are things I have been noticing about the city which I can share without my publishers nailing me for breach of contract. For instance, the city gives you the sense that it cannot decide what it wants to be. Does it want to be a city that has outrun its provincial shadow? Or does it want to be a city that wants to leverage those very provincial instincts? Ahmedabad also cannot decide whether it is the defining city of Gujarat even though it could well be.

In most great cities one feels the visceral effects as one approaches what is the center of its urban/cultural/historic gravity. I am yet to feel that in Ahmedabad, although there are a couple of places that do make you feel something akin to it. I am going to spend the next few weeks scouring Ahmedabad for anything and everything that would add to the narrative heft of my book.

Speaking of narrative heft, the arrest of Gujarat’s former junior Home Minister Amit Shah, accused of murder, kidnapping and extortion, would naturally be an important part of the story. I was particularly struck by the festive mood created by his followers around his arrest as if he had embarked on a pilgrimage for a lofty cause.

July 25, 2010

Normally, I avoid using verses to describe a grim political/military conflict because it sounds gimmicky and glib in a way that trivializes the subject at hand. But while reading the following passage in a New York Times story headlined ‘Pakistan Aids Insurgency in Afghanistan, Reports Assert’, a verse from a ghazal by noted Pakistani poet Khatir Ghazanvi popped up in my mind spontaneously.

The verse goes:

“Kuchch dushmani ka dhab hai, Na ab dosti ke taur

Donon ka ek rang hua tere shahar mein.”

There is neither any code in enmity nor etiquette in friendship here

In your world, the two merge indistinguishably

The passage in question is the following:

“The reports suggest, however, that the Pakistani military has acted as both ally and enemy, as its spy agency runs what American officials have long suspected is a double game — appeasing certain American demands for cooperation while angling to exert influence in Afghanistan through many of the same insurgent networks that the Americans are fighting to eliminate.

Behind the scenes, both Bush and Obama administration officials as well as top American commanders have confronted top Pakistani military officers with accusations of ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) complicity in attacks in Afghanistan, and even presented top Pakistani officials with lists of ISI and military operatives believed to be working with militants.”

The story is yet another deeply troublesome reminder, if any is still needed, how much the Pakistani state pushes the limits of acceptable international conduct and gets away with it. The NYT story seems to suggest that while the US is fully aware of the ISI entanglements with the Taliban, and perhaps even some elements of al-Qaeda, there is nothing much it can do to break that nexus. If there ever was a perfect example of the expression running with the hare and hunting with the hounds, this has to be it.

After reading/reporting/commenting on Pakistan for the better part of the last two decades, I am left with only one conclusion. There is an overt state and there is a covert state in Pakistan. The two operate with a vaguely defined compact where the activities of one cannot be directly traced to or linked with the other. A certain deniability is built into this compact whereby Pakistan’s political leadership can “legitimately” claim ignorance when confronted with evidence of all that the ISI and its affiliates do in the covert state. In that sense it is not that different from what the CIA or any other intelligence agencies do as a matter of routine. In Pakistan’s case though this incest ends up manifesting in the most vile and violent ways given the way the Taliban/al-Qaeda operate.

What is not left vague,however, is where the primacy in all important decision-making lies in Pakistan. It is the military-intelligence complex whose writ runs way beyond anything that the political leadership can do.

What I find fascinating is when Pakistan is confronted with any evidence about the activities of the covert state, its response can be distilled down to what to me sounds like ‘Up yours.’

PS: Khatir Ghazanvi was a widely read Urdu and Hindko author and poet who spoke Chinese, English, Malay and Urdu. He died in 2008 at age 83.

July 24, 2010

Edward Wong of The New York Times has a story out of Lhasa about how “Han Chinese workers, investors, merchants, teachers and soldiers are pouring into remote Tibet.”

Wong specifically mentions that he was on a five-day “carefully managed…official” tour of Tibet. In other words he was taken by the Chinese government to see what they wanted him to see. Junkets are a necessary evil in journalism which, when used intelligently, can produce results exactly opposite to what the establishment had in mind.

The story may not have achieved a result contrary to the extent that I am suggesting but it certainly confirms the frequently expressed fears within the exile Tibetan community about the forced demographic integration of Tibet into China.

“Chinese leaders see development, along with an enhanced security presence, as the key to pacifying the Buddhist region. The central government invested $3 billion in the Tibet Autonomous Region last year, a 31 percent increase over 2008. Tibet’s gross domestic product is growing at a 12 percent annual rate, faster than the robust Chinese national average,” Wong writes. I cannot and must not second-guess Wong’s personal feelings about the Tibet question but “pacifying the Buddhist region” may not necessarily be all that he means.

To Wong’s credit he has captured the resentment among the local Tibetans caused by the growing Han Chinese presence as well as he possibly could given the circumstances of his visit. There is a comment by Hao Peng, vice chairman and deputy party secretary of the region, acknowledging that the current system “may have caused an imbalanced distribution,” he said. “We are taking measures to solve this problem,” he said.

The sheer numbers are so ridiculously stacked up against the Tibetans in the China-Tibet dispute that there is no way the Tibetans can effectively counter the Han Chinese infusion. This is somewhat like what some hardliners have suggested for decades that India do in Kashmir—open the state up for unfettered economic integration of the valley by allowing anyone and everyone to settle down there. Of course, there is no parallel between Kashmir and Tibet.

I have been wanting to visit Tibet, even on a “carefully managed official” tour, for a long time. However, considering my circumstances, I barely manage to visit a Chinese diplomatic mission. I first tried in 1998 to obtain a Chinese visa in New Delhi. I was discouraged even from applying. Then in 2001, I tried in San Francisco but was told not to bother. Yet again in 2004, I gently broached the subject with a Chinese diplomat in New York only to cause him to laugh at the absurdity of my request.

During my current stay in India I am going to make one more attempt to visit both China and Tibet. If there is anyone monitoring this blog from the Chinese side, treat this as an official request to take me on a conducted tour.

July 23, 2010

When you are summoned by national investigators in connection with the charges of conspiracy to commit kidnapping, murder, extortion and destruction of evidence, it is never a good idea to go into hiding as a strategy.

It is elementary that dodging such a summons would only strengthen the perception of guilt. And if you happen to be a state’s home minister in charge of its law and order and also once happened to have been its law minister, the standards of conduct in the face of such a summons are pretty narrow and exacting. There is practically no flexibility in how one can respond other than answering the summons personally.

Yet, defying common sense, legal and moral responsibilities Gujarat’s junior Minister of Home Amit Shah went into hiding after India’s Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) required him to answer a litany of very grave charges. I was in Gandhinagar, the state’s capital yesterday, where much of the behind-the-scene politics was unfolding around Shah’s serious troubles with the law of the land. From my limited exposure to the atmosphere in the capital, I could tell that everybody was talking about Shah’s troubles, some openly but most mumbling under their breath. There was a general sense that the CBI charges could mark the beginning of the end of his career. I am not so sure for various reasons but that is not relevant here.

The plot surrounding this case is so complicated it could have happened only in real life and not in the pages of a political/crime thriller. In 2005, Sohrabuddin Sheikh, a 37-year-old resident of the neighboring state of Rajasthan, and his wife Kausar Bi, were picked up by the Gujarat’s Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS)from a bus near the city of Ahmedabad. The state government then claimed and continues to do so since that Sheikh was an operative of the Islamic terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taba who was on his way as part of a plot to target political leaders in the state. Soon after his arrest/abduction Sheikh was allegedly shot dead in cold blood. His wife Kausar was apparently raped and then burnt alive. A third person, Tulsiram Prajapati was also killed.

The CBI has charged 18 people in connection with the killings. So far 15 police officers, including former ATS chief D G Vanzara, have been arrested and jailed. Of the remaining three, Shah has been the most high profile, considering not just his position as the junior law minister but his proximity to the state’s Chief Minister Narendra Modi.

The sense in Gandhinagar was that while Shah was the immediate target of the investigation, Modi could be the eventual one given his virtually unassailable hold as the charismatic chief minister of Gujarat. There is nothing to suggest that the flames leaping around Shah would not threaten Modi in some way. The fact that the CBI is working under the direct order and supervision of the country’s highest Supreme Court carries a great deal of weight in the otherwise incendiary political atmosphere such cases always trigger.

It is inevitable that Shah would be arrested at some point with his application for anticipatory bail having been rejected. Of course, he has the option of moving the state’s high court to prevent his arrest. However, the trajectory of the investigation is clearly headed in the direction of his arrest.

Comeuppance is a word that definitely crossed my mind in Gandhinagar yesterday.

July 22, 2010

I should be under no obligation to post a fresh entry everyday on my blog. For one, no one pays for it. More importantly though, it is not as if people are waiting in nervous anticipation for what new profound insights into human experience I am peddling for the day. And yet, I feel compelled to write every day like a hack suffering from the terminal hack disease.

I do look at the “Recent Readers” bar on the right-hand side of the blog to get a feel for why visitors come to this site. As you might have noticed they are rather diverse in their geographical spread. Their search profile gives me some idea about what it is that brings them to this blog.

In recent weeks, I have been struck by the preponderance of the term “Christopher Hitchens’ sexuality” which has brought many visitors from around the world to my blog. It is a revelation that so many people know about the famously cantankerous contrarian British writer-journalist. What is more is that they are interested in his sexual preferences. Evidently, he used to swing both ways in his younger days, according to his own memoires ‘Hitch 22.’

I did not dwell on that aspect in my short post some weeks ago but merely made a mention of it. Nonetheless, I find that even today so many internet searchers are interested in such details about someone whose glamour quotient is not very much above zero. For instance, I would have understood this level of curiosity about Tom Cruise’s sexual preferences, not that I am implying anything.

Much as I would like to pretend that my blog has finally joined the must-read category on the web, the truth is far, really really really far, from it. To my credit, those who visit regularly do make a couple of points—one is that it is always readable and two that it is quirky and unpredictable. I suppose both those observations are reasonably accurate.

The short post about my meeting with Dev Anand the other day, for instance, prompted a lot of response. It may not reflect in comments under the entry because no one actually comments on my writing. However, I did get some email messages saying how charming the entry was. Some of my journalist friends recounted similar experiences of the movie icon’s impersonal graciousness. While I am on the subject I want to clarify that I meant impersonal graciousness as a genuine compliment. It should be taken to mean graciousness not determined by the kind of person or the class or the stature of the person it is being shown to.

As you can probably tell this Friday morning I am not in the mood for a more substantive entry. In that sense I have been saved by Christopher Hitchens’ sexual preferences and Dev Anand’s lifelong charms.